


The grotesque and the sublime

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, Love/Hate, M/M, Murder Fantasy, POV First Person, Power Dynamics, Sexual Content, Unhealthy Relationships, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:34:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24833167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Hate and love are equally destructive.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 8
Kudos: 63





	The grotesque and the sublime

I hate Tom. 

I tell myself that we're not the same--that he's a monster, and I, his mirror image, am just a man, but the lie twists the tip of my tongue. It crushes. It mangles. It burns. Like acid has been poured down my throat and now it makes cigarette holes in my esophagus.

I don't want to be like him.

Except, sometimes, I do.

Sometimes, when I'm standing in front of the mirror, my hands pressed into the porcelain of the sink, he comes to stand behind me; his hand on my shoulder--gripping the bone--his nails heavy in the hollows. Sometimes, he rests his chin on my shoulder and watches me with his mouth twitching and I can see that hypnotic ultraviolence glowing red in his eyes.

It's a hot, wet, aching, sort of violence that lives inside him--rotting him from the inside out. He thinks he can rot me too, that's why he smiles at me and snakes his hand around my waist, because he thinks he can spread his pathological decay. Force it into me like someone forced it into him. 

He's not wrong. 

I am, in part, a product of his design. 

A thing shaped by his soul writhing around inside me, but I know, just as he does, that there's always been something perversely _wrong_ with me. And how much of that is his fault, and how much of it is mine... I just can't tell anymore. 

Not when we're so uncomfortably symbiotic--two creatures cut from the same stone and containing the same moral cavities. He may have been the one to plant the weeds inside my brain--those stinging nettles that prickle against the backs of my hands--but I was the one who prepared the soil, and I was the one who gave them food and water and light. 

I'll still blame him though. 

And when he chews on my lip and makes me bleed for his own sick satisfaction, I'll tell him that it's all his fault-- _that filth makes filth_ \--and that he's the one who ruined me. 

I'll look at him and say all those things even as I think, with my own free will, about the monstrous things that I dream about doing to him. Those fantasies that are as grotesque as they are sublime, and that make me what he is twofold. 

Because I want to hold him down, my hands around his throat as I scream into his mouth. I want to fill him up--glut him--with my anger; with the fury that festers deep in the centre of my chest, obscured behind my ribs and nestled beside my heart. I want to hold him by the neck and smash his head against the floor--the human skull making contact with concrete again and again--cracking his cranium open piece by piece until I've torn him apart. 

I know that makes me a monster. 

He reminds me of it at night when we're wrapped up in the dark, and he holds me down against the mattress; his face hanging above me and those white teeth sharp and pointed like a god whose mouth is made from the stars. He holds me down hard and leans in close to my ear, so that the vibrations of his voice makes my skin prickle and every breath come short. 

And I let him hold me down. And I let him mouth at my throat. And I let him tell me what a fucking monster I am. 

Those words are so soft when they spill from his mouth; soft and warm, and like sweetened syrup they drip off his tongue and into my mouth. I swallow his words simply because they're his--all sweet and bitter like sugar and lime. 

"Do you think you're not like me, Harry?" he murmurs in the dark, laughter tickling the back of his throat, "do you really think you wouldn't do what I've done if you could?" 

And I don't know how to answer him, because I don't want to believe that I am like him (not yet, at least), but in the basest part of my heart I know that I am capable of doing what he's done. The thoughts I have, and the dreams that come to me of my fingers closing around his throat--squeezing. Squeezing. Squeezing--until those ultraviolet eyes are dim and he's limp under my hands, are enough for me to know that there are howling monsters in my heart. 

He doesn't allow me time to think, though. Instead he talks and talks, mouthing words into my lips. _I think you love me,_ he murmurs, a hand on my ribs, the fingers crawling up to my heart. _I think you can't help yourself,_ he says, _I think you want me, don't you, Harry?_ He pauses just to grind his palm down into my chest, just to feel the point where we connect. _I think you want me really bad._

And I just can't think with all his noise. 

So I shut him up the only way I know that works: by heaving him off me, and winding my hands into his, and pushing him to lie flat on his back. He's more human when he's underneath me and I want to keep him like that--like a dead butterfly collection--with a pin through his heart and my kisses ripping the corner of his mouth. I keep him like that, with his black eyes shining in the dark, and his skin getting shivery on the surface, but hot down underneath; him burning up like a supernova all because he's got his cock in my mouth. 

I tell myself that I only do it because I hate him and because I want him to know that. I tell myself that I want him to feel the points of my teeth and the roughness of my tongue as I splay it flat and heavy over the head and drag it down his length, and that I want him to remember how _weak_ I make him. 

How fucking _desperate_ he is when I'm taking him as deep as I can, and all he can do is scrabble his hands through my hair, even though the strands cut his fingers like barbed wire. Those little sounds--hopeless, pathetic, needy--spilling from his mouth and making a mess on his chin-- _darling, darling please,_ he says, choking on every letter. 

I want him to know it isn't even my mouth that makes him weak (though I'm sure it helps), it's just my presence. Me. Me. Me. The only person who understands him, who knows what it's like to live in those liminal spaces between the very fabric life and death. 

But most of all, I want him to know that I hate him so much that it's almost become a ritual of love. I can't live without him anymore, but I don't think he can live without me either--we're parasitic--and there's nothing I can do about it. 

I tell myself, when he's heavy and pulsing on my tongue, begging me for some end to his suffering, that I don't want to be like him, but I can feel the lie painted hot all over my mouth. I _do_ want to be like him, if only to hold him down with my teeth, if only to use my fist to splinter his ribs, if only to look him in the eye as I tear him apart.

I want to hate Tom. 

But I can't hate a man who's just like me.


End file.
